A U.S. airline executive advised Latin American carriers yesterday to join forces or risk being carved up by powerful carriers from the U.S., such as American and United. "Beware a pact with the devil," Martin Shugrue, president and chief executive officer of the new Pan Am, warned Latin American airline executives in a speech in Santiago, Chile. The "devil" reference is to American, which offered recently to partner and establish code sharing with Argentinian carrier Aerolineas Argentinas and Chile's LanChile.
Electric Fuel Corp. will produce a battery-powered, water-activated survivor locator light called "SurvivaLite." The lights attach to life vests and are required by FAA on commercial, over-water flights. The company said it has orders for 60,000 lights over the next two years.
Aeroservice Aviation Center has reached agreement with Emery Worldwide to install flight simulators at Emery's Dayton hub. Aeroservice said it already placed a DC-8-60 simulator and a 727-200 simulator. The DC-8 device received FAA certification Jan. 17, and an upgrade to its visual system is in progress. The 727 will be certified in the near future, the company said. Aeroservice said it will deliver a DC-8-70 simulator this month.
Carnival Corporation has joined Sabre's CruiseDirector, the computer reservations system's cruise booking system. Carnival includes Carnival Cruise Lines, Holland America Line, Windstar Cruises and Seabourn Cruise Lines, which account for 26% of cruise industry cabins.
TRO Learning has signed an accord with FlightSafty International under which FSI will be able to use TRO's library of computer-based pilot and maintenance training courseware at its 40 training centers. The pact also allows FSI to market TRO's 1,200 hours of training courseware products to airline clients.
Air France has reached a new agreement with two of its pilots unions that will make it more competitive with its international rivals. The pact, signed Friday with its two main pilots unions - SNPL and SPAC - will increase the time that Air France pilots fly, bringing them more in line with their counterparts at carriers like Lufthansa. A third union, SNOMAC, which represents the carrier's flight engineers, has tentatively agreed to the pact, an airline spokesman said.
China Eastern Airlines has contracted for an ab initio training program for a group of pilot cadets at FlightSafety's Vero Beach Academy. China's Civil Aviation Flying College will participate in planning the program.
FAA said it has released an electronic copy of the Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System (STARS) request for proposal through the World Wide Web and the Defense Department's Hanscom AFB Electric RFP Bulletin Board (HERBB). The STARS RFP is being released only for information purposes, FAA said. "This is not a request for proposal. There are only three teams eligible to submit proposals or the STARS requirement.
Carnival Air Lines has opened a World Wide Web site offering company history, news, reservations information, flight schedules and tour packages. The Internet address is http://www.carnivalair.com.
Emery Worldwide said its international logistics subsidiary will operate under the name Emery Global Logistics. The unit, formed in 1993 as Logistics Worldwide, provides integrated single-source services, including scheduled or charter air, ocean and truck transport, supply chain management, shipment monitoring and expediting, warehousing, inventory management and order fulfillment, customs clearance, management reporting and invoicing.
A 20.9% climb in revenue passenger miles across the Atlantic helped drive up American's systemwide traffic 6.5% last month, compared with February 1995. Capacity rose 3.6%, while the load factor inched up 1.7 points to 63.7%. The number of passengers boarded declined 1.1%. The carrier's traffic rose 2.1% for the first two months of the year, compared with the same period in 1995. Capacity declined 0.3%, and the load factor for the period gained 1.2 points to 63.7%. The number of passengers boarded by the carrier slipped 4.4%.
Air France's traffic rose 23.8% last month, compared with February 1995, on a 9.7% increase in capacity. The carrier flew 4 billion revenue passenger kilometers on capacity of 5.5 billion available passenger kilometers. Load factor was up 8.3 points to 73.4%.
Projecting into the future the funding cuts FAA has experienced in the past five years would mean "a drastic curtailing of current FAA services, let alone meeting new safety and capacity demands," the agency said yesterday. Replying to questions raised by the General Accounting Office about its funding shortfall estimates (DAILY, March 11), FAA noted that its budget over the past five years has declined by $600 million and its employee rolls are down by 5,000.
The Inmarsat maritime communications organization plans to establish a network of satellites with navigation capabilities, but it is running into interference from a U.S. Defense Department declaration that navigation payloads are "significant military equipment." Last week in London, an Inmarsat Assembly meeting authorized additional satellite capacity for navigation as a further step in its evaluation of a global International Satellite Navigation System (ISNS) (DAILY, March 11).
U.S.-Canada transborder traffic should grow at an average of 7.9% a year over the next five years, Transport Canada forecasts. Annual growth is expected to drop to about 4.5% after five years and level off at about 3.1% after 10 years.
The Pennsylvania congressional delegation and the governors of Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey have thrown their support behind DOT's tentative decision to award USAir Philadelphia-Rome rights. The group told the department in a letter that Philadelphia's international service has "long suffered at the expense of New York." The show of support follows last week's request by the Michigan congressional delegation that DOT reverse its decision and award the authority to Northwest for Detroit-Rome service (DAILY, March 8).
Summary Of Costs and Schedules For FAA's Major Modernization Projects 2-yr comparison of total F&E cost est (In millions of $) Projects Description/Anticipated Benefits 1995 1996 En-Route Replaces hardware, software& $1,055 $1,055 Automation controllers? workstation
Southwest Chairman Herb Kelleher, who celebrates his 65th birthday today, recently negotiated another five-year contract that will keep him at the helm of Southwest through the end of the century.
Mesaba Airlines, a Northwest Airlink carrier, contracted for up to 72 Saab 340s, the manufacturer said yesterday. Mesaba has firm orders for 50 aircraft and options for 22 more. The firm order includes 30 new Saab 340BPlus and 20 pre-owned 340A aircraft (DAILY, March 11). Deliveries will begin in May and continue at the rate of two a month through September 1998. Concurrently, Mesaba will begin eliminating its existing fleet of 26 Fairchild Metro III and 25 de Havilland Dash 8-100 aircraft.
United CEO Gerald Greenwald has started referring publicly to his carrier as "the most profitable airline in the world."United reported net earnings of $662 million on a fully distributed basis for 1995, but net earnings of only $349 million under generally accepted accounting principles.
House Transportation aviation subcommittee has switched the dates of the hearings on airport needs and the state block grant program. The hearing on airport needs is now scheduled for 9:30 a.m. March 13, and the hearing on the state block grant program is now scheduled for 1 p.m. March 14. Both hearings will be held in Room 2167, Rayburn Building.
Delta will collect donations on flights from Atlanta and Cincinnati to London Gatwick and Manchester until Dec. 31 for children in war-torn areas as part of Olympic Aid-Atlanta, a children's aid fundraiser keyed to the Olympic Games this summer.
South African Airways has installed Opinionmeters at three airports in South Africa to give travelers a chance to comment on their flying experience. SAA wants to measure customer satisfaction from pre-flight to post-flight operations by asking seven questions on waiting time, staff helpfulness, efficiency and comfort. SAA has installed four Opinionmeter kiosks at the airport in Johannesburg, three at Cape Town and two at Durban.
Civil Aeronautics Commission of Taiwan commissioned an air traffic control automation system developed by Loral Federal Systems-Air Traffic Control. The ATCAS will be phased into operation over three months and is scheduled to be fully operational on June 1. Loral has a $17.6 million CAA contract to maintain and support the system for 14 months.
British Airways won an appeal recently against a High Court ruling last June that supported 12 BA pilots who sued the carrier, claiming that a group of 90 pilots hired by BA were shortchanged of seniority because of the merger with British Caledonian in 1988.
